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Yes, of course MIDNIGHT EXPRESS was meant as a scare movie, and a thrill ride... and an excellent one at that. The problem with the film came with every Turkish character portrayed as an ugly/corrupt animal, and with everything Turkish (the cuisine, even the atmosphere of the streets) appearing as awful. The speech by Hayes in the courtroom ("You are a nation of pigs, I f*** your sons and daughters"), a speech not in the book, lent evidence to the film's racist intentions. The underlying idea was to make Turkey a land of hell. The director was probably motivated only by dramatic intent, but the great prejudice against Turks in the Western world made such all-out wickedness possible. (If the film's villains were, say, French, Italians, Israelis, or Argentinians, such all out demonization would not have been possible.) The end result is that people who saw the movie were afraid of Turkey, tourism dropped, Turkish-Americans were expected to account for the evilness of their heritage, and the damage continues each time this very irresponsibly handled film is aired. One needs to be in the shoes of the vilified in order to understand, and perhaps one way to attempt an understanding would be to substitute your own ethnicity for the Turks the next time you watch the film, and visualize the unending negative depictions as representing your heritage, and think about the effect it would have on the audience.
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